Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach

As part of the celebrations to mark the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, Peter Grimes comes home to the very beach that inspired it, in a landmark open-air staging by Aldeburgh Music.

The role of Grimes is sung by Alan Oke, who received huge critical acclaim for his portrayal of Aschenbach in the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival production of Death in Venice.

Fisherman Peter Grimes is an outsider in the community of misfits and eccentrics who populate the Borough, a fictionalised version of the village of Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Is he responsible for the death of his young apprentice? Is he mad, evil, or a misunderstood visionary?

Britten’s viscerally beautiful masterpiece has captured audiences’ imaginations worldwide ever since its premiere in 1945, transforming the sadistic fisherman of The Borough, the poem by George Crabbe on which the opera is based, into an enigmatic anti-hero.